NEWS NEWS

Just a few things about the 7pm news.
All the stations led their newscasts with the discovery of the body of 8 year old Hope.
TV6's anchor Samantha John did a telephone interview, for want of a better word, with Sharmilla Persad. But as soon as Miss Persad said her piece, she went straight back to Samantha, who thanked her then immediately said "In other news..." without so much as a pause. Tsk tsk.

So, was the the three month old baby who died, Omarion, a boy or a girl?
Shelly Dass of CNC 3 began telling us about Omarion by saying 'the baby boy', then half way through the story she switched on us and said it's a girl, and one of the doctors whose soundbite was used in the story said 'she'. Was he referring to the child or the mother?
But CNC's sister paper the Guardian has the story, written by Rhonda Krystal Rambally, and the child is a boy (http://www.guardian.co.tt/news10.html).

While Samantha stuck to using the words 'child' and 'infant' in her story as if whoever wrote it was not sure of the child's gender.
Then she went to a story about a report on sexual abuse of junior secondary school students, and went straight to the People Meter question which was whether viewers felt sexual abuse and poverty were 'casuing' crime and violence. Steups!

And Samantha, one more thing. These things are not your fault, but you and your producer should have paid closer attention to those scripts. You came back up later in the newscast with a soundbite from a woman you said was 'the last person to see Hope alive'. Well, we hate to break it to you, but she couldn't have been the last person to see Hope alive, unless she was present along with the man who confessed to killing her.

And there were two television reports of this story on Monday and Tuesday evening where persons being interviewed called the name of the suspect, and the name was not edited out. The report on Monday with Hope's mother naming the suspect, and on Tuesday, the neighbour who gave an interview to TV6 at the sight where the child's body was found.